Parliament has ratified the mining lease agreement between the government and the Barari DV Ghana Limited for the mining of lithium and other minerals at Mankesim in the Mfantsiman Municipality in the Central Region.
The ratification paves the way for commercial extraction of the rare mineral deposit that is expected to position the country as a major hub for lithium mining.
The tenure of the mining lease, which covers an area of 42.63 km2, is 15 years and it is renewable in accordance with the Minerals and Mining Act 2006 (Act 703).
The government negotiated a 12 per cent free carried interest in the company, compared to the 10 per cent free carried interest it has in all other mining companies in the country.
Per the agreement, which was rejected by the Minority, the company is to set aside one per cent of annual revenue for a community development fund to protect the communities impacted by its operations.
The Lands and Natural Resources Minister, Emmanuel Armah-Kofi Buah, presented the agreement to the House on December 19, last year and it was referred to the Committee on Lands and Natural Resources for consideration and report.
Ghana stands to gain
Providing a justification for the agreement, Mr Buah said Ghana stood to reap maximum benefits from a revised fiscal regime that linked royalties to international prices.
He told the House that under the newly enacted sliding-scale legislation, Ghana would earn higher revenues when market prices soared.
On how different the agreement was from the earlier one introduced to the House during the New Patriotic Party (NPP) era, he said the old agreement had a fixed provision on the growth and sustainability levy.
“We now have flexibility as there is a new provision that says that the company shall pay to the government of Ghana all other fees, levies and charges as provided under applicable laws.
“Under the old agreement, such provision was fixed at one per cent, but in the new agreement, there is flexibility to allow the government of Ghana to pluck in anytime there is that opportunity,” he said.
In terms of royalty, Mr Buah said there was a fixed royalty of 10 per cent under the old agreement, but the new agreement came with a royalty of 12 per cent due to the sliding scale introduced.
“We wanted to be sure that under this mining, lithium will not come to add to the destruction of roads and so we have inserted that within six months of ratification of the lease agreement, the company will undertake a feasibility studies for the construction of a jetty, barge and a mini-port system at Saltpond or an adjacent suitable location.
“We think that for the people of Ewoyaa and other communities who have waited for almost three years, this is an important day for them because a lot will happen in these communities when this project takes off,” the Lands and Natural Resources minister said.
Why Minority’s opposition?
Arguing against ratification of the agreement, the Minority Leader, Alexander Afenyo-Markin, said the Minority would have supported ratification of the mining lease for the Ewoyaa lithium project, as it was in the national interest.
He, however, said members of the caucus were not ready to endorse an agreement premised on unverified financial assumptions and governed by a regulatory instrument rushed into law over the Minority’s objection.
He explained that the agreement had been structured to deliver a lower royalty than the deal the same National Democratic Congress (NDC) had rejected in opposition.
“Ghana’s lithium endowment is a generational asset and the terms on which it is leased will outlast this Parliament and will define the revenue, employment and community development benefits that flow to Ghana for the duration of the mine’s life,” he said.
Double standards
Mr Afenyo-Markin recalled that on December 19 last year, the Minister of Lands and Natural Resources laid the Minerals and Mining Royalty Regulations, 2025, before Parliament, introducing a sliding-scale royalty regime for gold, lithium and other minerals.
He said that for lithium/spodumene, the price bands were five per cent (up to $1,500 per tonne), seven per cent ($1,501 to $2,500 per tonne), 10 per cent ($2,501 to $ 3,000 per tonne), and 12 per cent (above $3,000 per tonne).
The legislative instrument, he said, matured into law on March 9 this year, having completed the constitutionally required 21 sitting days without amendment.
He said the Minority noted that at the time of the original NPP negotiation of the agreement in 2023, spodumene prices stood at approximately $2,250 per tonne, yielding a 10 per cent fixed royalty.
“Under the government’s own new framework, that same price of $2,250 falls in the seven per cent band.
“In other words, the sliding scale delivers a lower royalty than the fixed rate that existed when the deal was first made, at precisely the price level used as the reference point for that deal.
“This is not an improvement on the NPP’s terms,” he said, pointing out that any price below $2,500 per tonne was a regression.
He recalled that the Chairman of the Subsidiary Legislation Committee, Patrick Boamah, publicly warned on March 10, 2026, that the Royalty Regulations could cost Ghana close to one million jobs by deterring mining investment.
He said those concerns were not resolved before the L.I. matured, and he opposed Parliament being asked to approve a mining lease governed by a regulatory instrument about which the Minority’s most fundamental concerns remained unresolved.
He drew the House’s attention to the fact that any additional royalty revenue the sliding-scale regime was projected to generate must be weighed against the revenue foregone from the GSL reduction.
“The government has not presented Parliament with a consolidated net revenue analysis and Parliament cannot responsibly ratify this lease without understanding what Ghana is, on balance, actually gaining.
Revised terms
On revised terms, the Minority Leader stated that the government accepted Atlantic Lithium’s claim that the sharp decline in global lithium prices, roughly 80 per cent from the 2022/23 peak, made the project unviable under a 10 per cent fixed royalty and that its post-tax internal rate of return had dropped to 13.6 per cent.
He said the Natural Resource Governance Institute had modelled the project independently and found it economically viable even at $785 per tonne of spodumene concentrate.
The company, he said, had not publicly disclosed the assumptions informing its revised internal rate of return estimate.
Yet, he said Parliament was being invited to ratify royalty concessions premised on financial projections that remained unverified and undisclosed.
“This is not a sound basis for the exercise of Parliament’s ratification function under Article 268,” he said.
Source:
www.graphic.com.gh